[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Raymac

So, I'm curious, how do you picture this flak gun? Something hand-held? A vehicle? Something an engineer sets up in the field? Or maybe more like a base turret so it's only at bases?
Then the rate of fire? Are you picturing like a Skyguard or more like a Flail?

It does sound like something like this would have a bit of a learning curve, but most things do, so I wouldn't worry about that. Also, I'm imagining this as an addition to the AA that we know and love in PS1 like the Maxes and Skyguard, even the turret upgrades and cerbrus turrets. Those would be more geared for the lower altitudes, like you stated, and this new flak gun is for the high altitude planes?

Flak is the AA that I think is the most balanced in the game and easiest to balance. It's easy to put flak on just about anything. They mentioned AA weaponry on tanks. That's one of the things that I was thinking altitude should really matter. Tanks shooting down liberators and galaxies is pretty ridiculous but a tank having some flak to have some reasonable defense against reavers and ward off skeets seems fine if it is a tradeoff and they are sacrificing something like a 20mm to get it.

At its simplest I'd like to see flak with different ammo types or characteristics, like flak that has a short range but a short arming distance (low-altitude flak), or flak that has a long range but a long arming distance (high altitude flak). Making infantry choose between those types is critical. Most will choose short because that's the immediate threat - reavers/skeets. Same thing with tanks I think. let them choose the type they want to equip but make it a tradeoff decision.

I can see engineers putting down stationary turrets that are flak cannons to put up some reasonable defense, but those turrets would need to be manned.

Rate of fire and damage can vary between flak platforms. I think a stationary turret should be one of the strongest forms of AA because it is both vulnerable to many things like AV, snipers, and aircraft, as well as having a limited and unmoving field of fire. Hand-held infantry flak should be like the rocklet - limited burst, limited range/accuracy.

If any vehicle can equip an AA secondary weapon then I think the need for specialized AA vehicles is no longer necessary. So perhaps we don't have a skyguard anymore, instead we have Enforcers, Threshers, and Marauders with secondary and minor flak guns with short-burst fire.

The key there is that there's a tradeoff between using flak vs some other weapon so the vehicle is giving up effectiveness to shoo off aircraft. But that all depends on how effective the AA is, how aircraft handles, how effective aircraft are against ground targets, etc...lots of variables.

I'd like to see non-flak guns too, like quad-barreled machienguns or miniguns that fire bursts of rounds into the air requiring some amount of accuracy by the gunner. Those could be by their nature low-altitude effectiveness, but I think we need some variety in the AA other than just flak flak flak. Anti-Air machineguns should probably have a minimal angle

Then again, we could also emulate German 88's which were AA guns that proved to be highly effective artillery. Perhaps a gun platform could be AA or AV depending on Ammunition type. So an engineer could build a cannon and change out ammo. One ammo type might be a slow ROF very hard hitting flak round that you have to do range-finding and ajustments and then fire one shot. If it hits it sould damn near instagib any aircraft but its so slow and hard to aim that fast moving aircraft probalby don't have to worry abou tit. But those that hover...well, they could be screwed. Then if there's no aircraft the engineer swaps out the ammo and it become sna Anti-Tank gun. or it could swap out ammo again and be an anti-infantry platform.

I really like the sound of that multi-use cannon that has low RoF but high damage. Big downsid eis that its stationary of course.